My name is Dave Horwitz.
I am a writer living in LA. I perform at the UCB.
My friend and I created DEALBREAKER and we wrote a book about it. I make videos too. If that's not enough, I also
Tweet.
DEHorwitz at gmail . com

Theme by nostrich.

1st November 2009

Photo with 24 notes

Today marks the 4 year Anniversary of the day I moved to LA. It has absolutely flown by. At this time, on November 1, 2005, a friend and I were on a plane, while our belongings (some clothes, some pots and pans, CDs/books/DVDs, bedsheets, not much else) were being slowly, SLOWLY shipped across the country, from Sharon, Massachusetts to Los Angeles in his 1998 Jeep Cherokee. I had no idea what to expect. I had spent the previous month getting rid of all my biggest possessions in preparation for the move. There was no way to take them with me, and I was going to need all the money I could acquire. So, thanks to Craigslist, I sold my bulky desktop computer (a holdover from my freshman year of college), my car (a 1993 Green Honda Accord that had been shoddily painted black by the previous owner), and worst of all, my drum set. I’d been buying hardware for that thing since I got it nearly 10 years before that. I’d lugged it to basements, college dorms, apartments, and finally my childhood bedroom, where it stayed until a dad came and claimed it for his young son. Selling that was like selling a little piece of myself, but I knew that it was for the best possible reason. All I knew was that I was moving to a new city 3,000 miles away from my hometown, and that I was going to have to find an apartment, a car, a computer, and a job as soon as possible, and not in that particular order. Looking back on it, it was the kind of decision you can only make as a 22 year old. Impulsive, exciting, and just a little foolish, it was a snap decision that was motivated by boredom and the desire for a drastic life change. Massachusetts is a pretty great place to grow up, and Boston is pretty much the ideal place to spend your college years, but after I graduated I definitely felt like had worn out my welcome. I felt like there was nothing there for me anymore. Los Angeles had the promise of a new start where anything was possible. I guess I had never romanticized it like that before, but when you’re feeling lost and washed up at 22, an offer to ship your stuff for free and move away from everything you’ve ever known sounds pretty, pretty, pretty good. I didn’t really know what, if anything, was waiting for me here, but I was determined to figure it out, because all I had going on in Boston was a job opportunity that had just fallen through, a college to hang around that I was not enrolled at anymore, and a family who’d have been happy to let me live with them as long as I needed. And that was NOT what I needed. Moving was like lighting a big, scary fire under my ass. The first few weeks were rocky. The Jeep that we shipped out was over a week late in arriving with all of our stuff, so we had to rent a car. We foolishly spent the first night in the most run down, disgusting motel I’ve ever seen. We made the rookie mistake of thinking that the Walk of Fame was a central location and that the surrounding establishments would be on the up and up. We were, of course, terribly wrong. What we got instead were used condoms in the hallway, bullet holes in the wall, and cigarette burns in the blanket. The rest of that week was spent on the pullout couch of a friend who lived not far from the Murder Inn, as we referred to it. Once we found an apartment, after days of trudging to an internet cafe and looking up places on Craigslist and Westside Rentals, we started to slowly amass things. a TV here, a coffee table there. I got a 1995 Nissan Maxima, which I would go on to run into the ground, thanks to a year and a half stint as a runner at a movie trailer production house. I started doing comedy with some friends at places like El Cid and the Steve Allen Theatre, and ultimately ended up as a regular performer at the UCB. My roommate never really liked living here, and after 6 months he broke the lease and moved back to Boston. He’s now a snowboard instructor in Lake Tahoe and he goes from organic farm to organic farm, working for room and board. Since moving to LA I’ve lived in Echo Park, North Hollywood, and Koreatown. I’ve performed in hundreds of comedy shows. I’ve met and worked with some of my heroes. I’ve been paid to write and act, which is technically all I really want to do. I’ve had major, crushing career disappointments, and also amazing opportunities and experiences. I’ve made some of the most amazing friends, and avoided some of the worst. I’ve seen the most significant relationship of my life grow, flourish, and die, and I’ve had it destroy me (and then ultimately make me stronger). I’ve made more music than I ever did in Boston, and continue to do so. I’ve met the most amazing and terrible people I’ve ever encountered. I’ve handed Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes lunch menus. I’ve driven giant plaster heads in secure wooden cases to the airport with the most urgent of care. I’ve been (under)paid to help write and develop a TV show that went nowhere, and a web show that’s being held hostage by the studio that produced it. But all in all, after 4 years of tinkering away at something that could possibly resemble a life and a career, I can honestly say that I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else, doing anything else. LA, I love you. Let’s try to keep it that way, okay?

Today marks the 4 year Anniversary of the day I moved to LA. It has absolutely flown by. At this time, on November 1, 2005, a friend and I were on a plane, while our belongings (some clothes, some pots and pans, CDs/books/DVDs, bedsheets, not much else) were being slowly, SLOWLY shipped across the country, from Sharon, Massachusetts to Los Angeles in his 1998 Jeep Cherokee. I had no idea what to expect.

I had spent the previous month getting rid of all my biggest possessions in preparation for the move. There was no way to take them with me, and I was going to need all the money I could acquire. So, thanks to Craigslist, I sold my bulky desktop computer (a holdover from my freshman year of college), my car (a 1993 Green Honda Accord that had been shoddily painted black by the previous owner), and worst of all, my drum set. I’d been buying hardware for that thing since I got it nearly 10 years before that. I’d lugged it to basements, college dorms, apartments, and finally my childhood bedroom, where it stayed until a dad came and claimed it for his young son. Selling that was like selling a little piece of myself, but I knew that it was for the best possible reason.

All I knew was that I was moving to a new city 3,000 miles away from my hometown, and that I was going to have to find an apartment, a car, a computer, and a job as soon as possible, and not in that particular order. Looking back on it, it was the kind of decision you can only make as a 22 year old. Impulsive, exciting, and just a little foolish, it was a snap decision that was motivated by boredom and the desire for a drastic life change. Massachusetts is a pretty great place to grow up, and Boston is pretty much the ideal place to spend your college years, but after I graduated I definitely felt like had worn out my welcome. I felt like there was nothing there for me anymore.

Los Angeles had the promise of a new start where anything was possible. I guess I had never romanticized it like that before, but when you’re feeling lost and washed up at 22, an offer to ship your stuff for free and move away from everything you’ve ever known sounds pretty, pretty, pretty good. I didn’t really know what, if anything, was waiting for me here, but I was determined to figure it out, because all I had going on in Boston was a job opportunity that had just fallen through, a college to hang around that I was not enrolled at anymore, and a family who’d have been happy to let me live with them as long as I needed. And that was NOT what I needed. Moving was like lighting a big, scary fire under my ass.

The first few weeks were rocky. The Jeep that we shipped out was over a week late in arriving with all of our stuff, so we had to rent a car. We foolishly spent the first night in the most run down, disgusting motel I’ve ever seen. We made the rookie mistake of thinking that the Walk of Fame was a central location and that the surrounding establishments would be on the up and up. We were, of course, terribly wrong. What we got instead were used condoms in the hallway, bullet holes in the wall, and cigarette burns in the blanket. The rest of that week was spent on the pullout couch of a friend who lived not far from the Murder Inn, as we referred to it.

Once we found an apartment, after days of trudging to an internet cafe and looking up places on Craigslist and Westside Rentals, we started to slowly amass things. a TV here, a coffee table there. I got a 1995 Nissan Maxima, which I would go on to run into the ground, thanks to a year and a half stint as a runner at a movie trailer production house. I started doing comedy with some friends at places like El Cid and the Steve Allen Theatre, and ultimately ended up as a regular performer at the UCB. My roommate never really liked living here, and after 6 months he broke the lease and moved back to Boston. He’s now a snowboard instructor in Lake Tahoe and he goes from organic farm to organic farm, working for room and board.

Since moving to LA I’ve lived in Echo Park, North Hollywood, and Koreatown. I’ve performed in hundreds of comedy shows. I’ve met and worked with some of my heroes. I’ve been paid to write and act, which is technically all I really want to do. I’ve had major, crushing career disappointments, and also amazing opportunities and experiences. I’ve made some of the most amazing friends, and avoided some of the worst. I’ve seen the most significant relationship of my life grow, flourish, and die, and I’ve had it destroy me (and then ultimately make me stronger). I’ve made more music than I ever did in Boston, and continue to do so. I’ve met the most amazing and terrible people I’ve ever encountered. I’ve handed Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes lunch menus. I’ve driven giant plaster heads in secure wooden cases to the airport with the most urgent of care. I’ve been (under)paid to help write and develop a TV show that went nowhere, and a web show that’s being held hostage by the studio that produced it. But all in all, after 4 years of tinkering away at something that could possibly resemble a life and a career, I can honestly say that I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else, doing anything else.

LA, I love you. Let’s try to keep it that way, okay?

  1. theidiotking posted this